Elayne checked the library, the great hall, even the kitchens, but Dunn was nowhere to be found. In the end, she exited the castle through the back door of the kitchen, thinking that perhaps he had gone outside. The darkness seemed to thicken there, away from the torches that illuminated the walls, and she treaded carefully as she made her way through the gardens, searching for any sign on him.
In the quiet, there was the sudden sound of voices, accompanied by giggles. It seemed to Elayne that they were quite far from where she stood, though the echoes carried the voices towards her, piquing her curiosity.
Neither sounded like Dunn. He had a low, baritone voice and this sounded nothing like him. If she had to guess, Elayne would say one of them was a girl or a young woman, the other a boy.
Following the sound, it didn’t take her long to realize where it was coming from.
The loch. Foolish bairns.
What were they doing there in the middle of the night? Didn’t they know how dangerous it was, going there without anyone to help them, without anything to light their way?
Her feet carried her quickly to the lake that stretched behind the castle. Though she loathed to visit it, its location was clear in her mind, etched into it from all the times she had gone there as a little girl, swimming with her mother. She hadn’t even made it toits bank yet when she heard a scream, followed by the splash of water.
Nay, nay, it cannae be.
For a moment, Elayne came to a halt, every muscle in her body seizing with terror. She didn’t need to see what had happened to know. In her mind was an image from long ago: herself, falling in the loch, her mother jumping in after her to save her.
Her mother drowning.
Without a second thought, Elayne crossed the rest of the distance and jumped into the water. The chill of it was a shock to her body and she almost gasped before she remembered to keep her mouth shut, letting no water inside. With only the moonlight as her guide, all she could truly see were shadows, dark and looming in the deep blue-black of the lake, but thankfully, the boy hadn’t sunk too deep. For she had seen the girl standing on the shore calling desperately after him.
Elayne saw him, his strength leaving him as he struggled to swim upwards. His clothes were weighing him down, and so were Elayne’s, soaked as she was to the bone. He was fighting to stay afloat, and as he gave into the exhaustion, there was little he could do. It was up to Elayne to grab him and bring him back to the surface, and so she dived deeper and deeper, until her hand could finally close around the boy’s arm.
Dragging him closer, Elayne began to kick her feet, trying to rise back up to the surface. The boy tried to help her, buthis movements were sluggish, providing little assistance as she dragged him up and up through the water. All she could do was push through the burn of her lungs, through the ache in her joints, refusing to let the boy meet the same fate as her mother.
He couldn’t have been more than twelve, thirteen. He was too young. He had all his life ahead of him.
With that thought, Elayne finally broke the surface, drawing in a gasping breath. The girl was right there, at the edge of the bank, and she reached for them both, but Elayne passed the boy to her. She pushed him with all her might as the girl pulled, and thanks to the two of them working together, he was finally out of the water.
He was breathing, Elayne could hear. His breaths were wheezing, strangled, but he was breathing.
Her limbs felt so heavy—her clothes even heavier. The girl reached for her, grabbing Elayne’s arm, but she was too little, too frail to pull someone twice her size out of the water. She was even smaller than the boy, and even though Elayne herself was a short, lithe woman, she was just that: a woman, too big for the little girl’s strength.
It didn’t take long for Elayne’s arm to slip through the girl’s fingers, slick with water as it was. Panic gripped Elayne, its talons tearing through her stomach as she began to thrash in the lake, desperately trying to hold on. It was as though she were in one of her nightmares, the cold water drawing her in its depths, the weight of it crushing her. Everything around her was dark,her sight either blinded by the night or her fear. Everything inside her told her to get out of there no matter what it took. In that moment, even though she had just saved the boy, she was certain she would have stepped on another to get out of there. There were no thoughts in her mind; only instinct.
What hope did she have? There was no one there to save her and she couldn’t save herself. Perhaps it was her fate, after all, to die like this. Perhaps in the end, she couldn’t escape it.
The children’s voices were muffled by the water as Elayne sank into the depths of the lake, her body finally losing all its strength and giving up. In her panic, one thought made it through to the forefront of her mind.
I wonder what me faither will say.
The voices drifting in from the windows were loud as Dunn walked back to the chambers, he shared with Elayne. He frowned to himself, alarmed, as he rushed to the closest window and looked outside, searching for the source of the screams.
They seemed to be coming from the lake, odd as it was that anyone would be there at that time of the night. Though he couldn’t tell what was happening, he was certain it couldn’t be anything good. Why would they be there in the middle of the night, shouting like that?
At first, Dunn feared they might be under attack, but when his initial shock subsided, he realized how unlikely that would be. It didn’t sound like it at all, the voices panicked and few, not like there were troops nearby. Perhaps the guards were handling the situation.
Something told him, though, that he should run to the lake and see for himself. What if someone was in danger? What if the guards reached the lake too late? What if they didn’t bother at all?
Running through the castle, Dunn spilled out onto the courtyard. He had a vague idea of where the lake was, having seen it through the castle windows, and so he headed in that direction, breath catching in his throat as he rushed to get to the source of the sound, the treacherous darkness around him making it difficult to see the way.
When he made it to the lake, he saw a boy and a girl, the boy soaked from head to toe, the girl alternating between tending to him and looking fearfully into the lake. Dunn crouched down next to her, grabbing her gently by the shoulders to pull his attention to him.
“What happened?” he asked.
Panic washed over the girl’s features, her eyes wide, her entire body trembling with terror. She seemed unable to speak even as her lips parted, her words dying in her mouth before she could ever utter them. Instead, she pointed to the lake with a shaky hand, the only sound she could make a whimper.
It was all Dunn needed, though, to understand there was still someone in the lake. He didn’t bother removing his clothes or his boots before he jumped in, fearing that whoever was in there had been in the water for too long and that he was too late.
